Summer Thunder
by K. A. Maples
Summary: A cub finds answers in a summer storm.


She sat inside the little hut, her chin resting in her hands as she weighed and considered her options. They said, judging from her genealogical history, that she was most likely of Fianna stock, though if the Garou blood came from her mother's side, her blood tribe might well be the Get of Fenris.  
  
She didn't particularly like either tribe. The Fianna were too loud, to raucous. In them she saw much of the behavior that had put her father in an early grave. Besides, she couldn't sing or play, though she could tell stories as well as any English major could.  
  
And the Get... she had no business with that tribe. She knew full well that she was a soft creature, one too fond of her comforts, not meant to be a warrior as those hard people were. She saw too much of everything she'd hated in her schoolmates in them.  
  
She had, of course, been approached by the Glasswalkers. She'd been found by them, after her change. She could almost picture herself joining them... but she was only just computer literate. They already had people who could do what she did, and could do it far better. Whenever she tried to picture herself in that tribe, it just wouldn't come.  
  
She had also considered the Bone Gnawers, the lowest of the low amongst the tribes. She could not live as they could. Once again her fondness for comforts came forward.  
  
The Furies.... she liked them. She agreed with many of their politics. And she knew that she could do without being around men. The fact was, she could do with being without *anyone*. She had never been a people person. Which was something that had attracted her to the Silent Striders.  
  
But no, she didn't really belong to those two tribes, either. She was too much a homebody, and not enough of an activist. Nor did she find whatever it was she was looking for amongst the Children of Gaia. As with the Fianna, she saw too much of what had killed her father in their behavior.  
  
She knew, on her father's mother's side, that she had some Native American blood, but she was too much a white woman to ever join the Wendigo, and she found their attitude to be exactly like the black children she'd gone to school with. The ones who had tormented her because she was one of the few whites, accused her ancestors of owning slaves, or of being Nazies. At that age, they could not understand that her mother's family had come over to America just after World War I, or that her father's family had been too poor to own slaves. Not that they would have cared.  
  
She found herself intrigued by the Uktena, and her Theurge's soul found kindred spirits amongst some of them... but once again she found herself unable to see herself with them.  
  
Outside the window, she saw lights flash. Her first thoughts were that someone was setting off fireworks. of some sort... but those thoughts were erased when she heard the quiet rumble of distant thunder. She shook her head and stepped outside, her stomach harshly reminding her that she hadn't eaten in a while, and it was time to fill her belly.  
  
She stopped and looked up at the sky as thunder flashed again, and found herself transfixed as fingers of electricity danced from cloud to cloud. Between the white hot flashes, she could see the stars. The clouds had not yet blotted those pinpricks of light out, and only a few hot drops of rain slammed down around her.  
  
As she watched, the clouds rolled and boiled, illuminated by their lightning, screaming their thunder, as they moved across the sky. Outlines of vague shapes flashed into sight, then fell into darkness as if they were dancing around a great strobe light. The heat seemed to grow beneath the black blanket, like the storm was trying to bake all that lay beneath it. More frequent drops fell on her glasses as she watched the clouds grow together, still spitting out tongues and grasping claws of lightning in every direction.  
  
In those clouds, in that storm, she found her answer.  
  
***********  
  
The broad shouldered Shadow Lord looked up from his book as branches broke beneath feet unused to the woods. Not that the cub was trying to hide her passage... but she would have to learn better. And learn, he knew, she would. She had a quick mind, well suited to the ever shifting politics and alliances of his tribe.  
  
"So," he said, more musing aloud than speaking to the cub that had taken a seat before him, "what shall I call you."  
  
"Summer Thunder." 


End file.
